-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Other Altars - Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder Craig Lockwood�1993 CompCare Publishers 3850 Annapolis Lane, Suite 100 Minneapolis, MN 55441 612.559.4800/800.328.3330 ISBN 0-89638-363-6 255+pps � out-of-print/one edition. ----- A very interesting and excellent book. Om K --[1]-- Chapter 2 WHERE THERE'S SMOKE "One important dynamic influencing this debate has been the clinical issues involved in the treatment of the effects of traumatic stress." -Alexander C. McFarlane, 1990 Paralleling the furor over the McMartin case was a curious but overlooked fact. By 1988, it had been clinically well established that persons diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (MPD) consistently disclosed backgrounds of severe traumatic childhood sexual abuse. Distinguished MPD authority, Frank W. Putnam, M.D., noted in Diagnosis and Treatment of MPD that it was his impression that the "abuse suffered by multiple personality patients tends to be far more sadistic and bizarre than that suffered by most victims of child abuse." One of the country's preeminent MPD clinicians, Bennett G. Braun, M.D.�then director of Chicago's Rush-St. Luke's Presbyterian Hospital's Dissociative Disorders Unit�conducted a survey among clinicians. Dr. Braun's research revealed that more than 25 percent of those patients diagnosed with MPD also claimed abuse as children in ritual settings. Not good enough, countered the skeptics: MPD is an overdiagnosed psychological fad. So what if people suffering from major psychological disorders make claims? Is that proof? Besides, other reputable clinicians feel that iatrogenesis�physician� or therapist-induced disorder-causes MPD. Richard P. Kluft, M.D., editor of Dissociation, the official Journal of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, replied to counter arguments in a lucent editorial in the June 1989 issue. "It is a curious fact," wrote Dr. Kluft, "that despite the absence of any hard data for the iatrogenesis of MPD, the vocal insistence that MPD is an iatrogenic disorder remains a widely held and 'respectable' point of view. Many of our colleagues who freely admit that they have no clinical experience with MPD and have not read the literature of this field nonetheless feel quite secure in maintaining that the condition is an artifact, or merely a social-psychological phenomenon." Deconstructing the Devil Among the most intelligent and articulate of the disbelievers stood a group of tenured academics, progressive sociologists who subscribed to a school of postmodern scholarly criticism called constructionism. In their introduction to The Satanism Scare, a collection of scholarly articles about contemporary Satanism, James T Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley, three sociology professors, view Satanism as a "social construction" and ritual abuse as a "claim." Looking carefully at "claimsmakers' interests," their constructionist analysis attempts to discover hidden motives and it what advantages accrue to claimsmakers" when their claims are taken seriously. "Eyewitness" claims of widespread ritual abuse, Richardson, Best, and Bromley believed, were influenced by the "application of a medical model to behavior that may well have been illusory They saw this as a "crucial element in the rise of anti-Satanism Limiting their criticism to Satanism meant that they didn't have to account for the wide variety of survivors' claims about other cults not based solely on Judeo-Christian beliefs about Satan. Viewed from this academic perspective, claims of the existence of ritual abuse were little more than sheepish folk tales garbed in wolves' clothing. Ritual abuse wasn't as dangerous as the public's belief in rumors. Real intellectual concern should center on tendencies toward hysterical panic-reaction against nontraditional religions, ethnic/racial minorities, and feminist groups. Believing in ritual abuse, according to this theory, seemed politically incorrect. Teacup Tsunami An academic tempest was brewing in a psychotherapeutic teacup. As chairman of the scientific committee for the 1990 annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation (ISSMP&D), Dr. Frank W Putnam, respected author of the book Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder and chief of the Dissociative Disorders unit at the National Institute of Mental Health, made an important decision. Sensing, perhaps, that the political waves over the ritual abuse issue had the destructive potential of a tidal wave to his government-funded research, Dr. Putnam encouraged certain papers to be submitted and presented at the conference. Presenters were Sherrill Mulhern, a University of Paris lecturer on anthropology; Richard Noll, an obscure therapist from Philadelphia with minor MPD treatment experience; and George K. Ganaway, M.D., a recognized MPD specialist. Many ISSMP&D members attending the conference perceived Dr. Putnam's inclusion of Mulhern and Noll as a cynical attempt at camp-splitting. Noll, though he had published papers in American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, and Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, was unknown in the MPD community. Several of the conference attendees characterized him as a professional expendable who had no idea that he was being used. Through him, they contended, Putnam could cast doubt on the contentious issue of linking MPD to ritual abuse. If such allegations about Putnam's motives were true, and, as some believed, people in high places were involved in organized abuse, this might conceivably affect funding for Putnam's program. If such camp-splitting worked, a feather in his cap. If it failed, no problem, just another dissenting opinion. Noll had written a letter to the editor of Dissociation, responding to the 1989 article, "Satanism: Similarities Between Patient Accounts and Pre-Inquisition Historical Sources," by Sally Hill and Jean Goodwin, M.D. Noll's contention, reflecting the general tone of the disbelievers, was that the psychotherapists were "stepping out of their traditional areas of expertise by citing historical materials in an undisciplined manner." "Hill and Goodwin," wrote Noll, "fall into many traps in their selective use of often inferior historical materials." Noll's letter rambled on, likening any belief in human sacrifice cults to the "paranoid mass delusion" of Nazis, conservative Christians, and UFO wackos. In mentioning the Nazis, Noll ignored discussing the general suppression by our government and press alike of early reports of the Nazi death camps. Slaughter had been industrialized in wartime Germany. Yet, in spite of substantive intelligence, European and American military authorities shelved the reports until late in the war. If claims of this magnitude were disregarded and denied, Noll's critics suggested, it takes no stretch of the imagination to understand how reports of small well-organized groups performing occasional human sacrifices might be ignored. Whatever Hill and Dr. Goodwin's shortcomings were as amateur historians, in their article they examined primary historical sources from the early fourth-century Christian era and documented ten elements of ancient ritual behavior and practice that also show up in disclosures by contemporary MPD patients. If these similarities proved valid, they would lend credence to the patients' claims that some of the cults' practices were very old. Letting George Do It In the December 1989 issue of Dissociation, Dr. George Ganaway, a psychiatrist from Georgia's Ridgeview Institute, who had made several important contributions to the ongoing debate about ritual abuse and its relationship to MPD and memory, published the paper "Historical Truth Versus Narrative Truth: Clarifying the Role of Exogenous Trauma in the Etiology of Multiple Personality Disorder and Its Variants." Dr. Ganaway�never short on garbled syntax�offered an "alternative multidetermined explanation for certain unverified trauma memories that currently are being accepted and validated as factual experiences by many therapists. "In addressing the sensitive area of patient credibility it is the author's intent," Ganaway noted, "to impugn neither the data collected by investigators in the field who believe most or all MPD patient memories to be factual historical accounts nor the honesty of MPD patients or their therapists." Their memories, however, according to the prolix Dr. Ganaway, seemed to be recovered during therapy sessions of a "progressively bizarre and exotic quality and incredible quantity as to test the credulity of even the most empathic and openminded therapist. The most widely addressed and publicized example of this has been a virtual epidemic of MPD patients reporting childhood and sometimes contemporary adult involvement in multigenerational satanic cults." Others felt Ganaway's "virtual epidemic" posed a challenging psychological opportunity for study and discussion. Walter C. Young, M.D., a respected psychiatrist and then president of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, offered a rational manifesto in the March 1990 ISSMP&D newsletter: "There is no way," wrote Dr. Young, "to know to what extent MPD and other dissociative states will be connected to ritual abuse, though it certainly happens frequently enough that we have to be aware and willing to address ritual abuse openly in responsible ways without causing undue alarm or exaggerated and hysterical reactions." A committee was formed within the society to investigate. Soon thereafter, committee member Ganaway was quoted in the Los Angeles Times: "The likelihood is, this is going to turn out to be urban legend ... I certainly don't believe there's any satanic conspiracy." Memory's Hidden Costs During the November 1990 ISSMP&D conference, Dr. Putnam opened the plenary session-and the debate. Noting that the field faced a "future of diminishing treatment resources," he put first things first-dollars. Putnam cautioned the assembly that dividing the MPD and child-abuse therapeutic community into believers and disbelievers would undermine its credibility and accomplishments. His message was clear: carrying this too far without solid forensic evidence will cost you your research grants.[1] Sherrill Mulhern followed, confronting the audience in brusque, strident tones. She stated accurately that many mental health professionals were forming their perceptions about ritual abuse as a result of professional conferences and seminars on satanic ritual abuse. Mulhern's research indicated their conclusions were contradictory and factually unrelated to each other-the result of a faulty conceptual backdrop and a "preexisting belief-bias." This amounted to group indoctrination on the issues, thus screening out alternative explanations for the phenomena. Richard Noll dismissed those who believed their patients' claims of covens practicing torture, mind control, and sacrifice. These were, he said, analogous to those "millennia-old fears of heretical thinking," responsible for influencing "modern fears of Satanism." He went on to say that attempts by clinicians to link such behavior as might exist were selective. The nonhistorian clinicians were "unaware of all the historical materials and critiques of these sources." Much of this material has been categorized by Norman Cohn, Noll's favorite historian, as an "ancient form of propaganda, promoted by one group to devalue the beliefs and practices of another." Mulhern and Noll cut a line through the therapeutic community. A minority joined them in refusing to believe sacrificial murder was going on; the majority still believed their patients' accounts. Dissociation's DNA But something else was also going on. Almost simultaneously, California psychotherapists, Steven Ray and Pamela A. Reagor, two of a handful of the most highly experienced clinicians treating MPD in the United States, uncovered another level of evidence. Psychologists had suspected dissociation was inherent in certain children who exhibited a genetic predisposition to dissociation-what amounted to a common, if not universal, human survival skill. Accepted theory held that multiplicity developed reactively. Infants or young children used their innate capacity and ingenuity to create a cluster of "personalities" to cope with the conflicting demands of a dangerous environment far too overwhelming for one little person. Reagor and Ray discovered solid psychological evidence that besides the above "natural" features of MPD, certain patients presented some additional critical characteristics. "We saw sophisticated external implantation, by someone other than the subject, of hundreds of complex personality fragments, Reagor noted, in the 1991 sixth issue of Beyond Survival magazine. These external implantations, including suicidal ones, were arranged in what appeared to be a complex system. Ray suspected that the programming acted like DNA, encoding specific dissociative patterns within the MPD system. It was a revolutionary-and sinister�concept. Reagor defined their discovery as structured MPD as opposed to the commonly understood reactive MPD. According to Reagor: Almost all multiples have developed their MP systems to some extent on a reactive basis ... with some parts [or alters, the clinical term for different personalities] specializing in specific emotions ... or skills, and still others [merging] to keep close lost fiends, dead siblings, feared abusers, or sources of fun or comfort. Usually, the child organizes his internal world to suit his own experience or interest: a castle with a moat, a rocket ship, or a computer lab. Some part usually knows where everyone is: any changes in the inner environment or in the whereabouts of different alters usually mean something important about the reactive multiple's overall involvement in, or resistance to, the therapeutic process. Structured multiples, however, usually present all the above features, as well as some critical additional characteristics. First, a structured multiple's internal structure and compliment of personalities is engineered largely by an external abuser or "programmer," who may or may not participate in a satanic or other cult. In many satanic ritual abuse cases, for instance, reactive (self-made) parts usually reside at levels one and two of a basically seven-level system, which is sometimes further organized into quadrants. There appear to be "boiler plates" with specific types of programming, setting out what procedure is to be accomplished at what age, as well as standardized methods for how personalities are to be created, moved, isolated, grouped, connected, or split apart. Like most reactive MPs, structured MPD patients are abused both in natural or ritual settings, and also in "programming" sessions. Clinical linkage had been made with case -corroborated evidence. More questions now confronted Reagor and Ray. Did this represent enough psychological evidence that trauma-structured dissociation was being promulgated beyond the particular patient and cult to which the patient claimed to have belonged? if so, it seemed almost too good to be true. What if the patient were a plant. In a house of mirrors, which is the true reflection? More research needed to be done, but Steven Ray learned he was dying from symptoms of AIDS. A Matter of Memory During the ISSMP&D's eighth international conference, held in Chicago in November 1991, Elizabeth Loftus, a clinical psychologist and researcher from the University of Washington, presented a paper based on her findings relating to the accuracy of memory. Dr. Loftus had served as a consultant in a 1989 case involving purported ritual abuse in Olympia, Washington. She and another academic, Berkeley sociologist Richard Ofshe, had questioned victims' memories and the methods used by investigators in securing confessions from the accused perpetrators. Memory, Dr. Loftus stated, especially long-term memory, is "far from completely reliable." Instead it has a "tendency to edit and embellish," and is, therefore, intrinsically fallible, inaccurate, subject to manipulation, and generally prone to producing errors. During Loftus's dramatic presentation, the audience of over four hundred psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and clinical social-workers sat stunned. The patients they'd been treating, and had been puzzled over, whose stories had shocked them with their horrible detail, according to Loftus, were probably relating false memories. Response from the audience to Dr. Loftus's claims, after a polite round of subdued applause, was immediate, vocal, and caustic. One woman recalled public disbelief at stories of the Holocaust, warning that discounting the survivors' stories because they were so bizarre was dangerous. Rising to his feet, Dr. Braun, the program chairman, challenged the relationship of her research, which was confined only to the memory of ordinary events, not to trauma-induced memory. Memory induced by trauma, contended Braun, functions in a much different manner. Dr. Loftus's research, she admitted, had not been designed around victims of severe trauma, nor did it account for the ways in which traumatic memory differs from ordinary memory. FMS vs. MPD Soon thereafter, the Philadelphia-based False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF), bearing Drs. Loftus and Ganaway's names on the board of directors, was formed. Another acronym, FMS for false memory syndrome, had entered the vocabulary. In a battle of initials, the disbelievers were fighting back. And a wellfunded fight they were waging. Quickly garnering media attention, FMS received more national TV coverage in the organization's first six months than the child protection movement had received in its first six years. Where was all their money coming from? A well-placed Hollywood insider made an unconfirmed leak to a journalist, indicating that the FMS Foundation might be receiving funding from the porno-film industry. The journalist began checking into the allegation. Meanwhile, MPD clinicians challenged FMS Foundation's assertions on the basis that little, if any, clinical evidence of FMS in relation to traumatic abuse existed. What little existed was inconclusive. Psychiatrist Richard J. Lowenstein, M.D., the outgoing president of the ISSMP&D in December 1992, considered the FMSF's claims of proof and research and found them wanting. "False memory syndrome," noted Dr. Lowenstein in the ISSMP&D newsletter, "is a putative clinical entity promulgated by a foundation of the same name to attempt to dispute the veracity of many allegations of early childhood sexual abuse, especially those involving claims of amnesia until later life." Dr. Lowenstein examined the FMS Foundation's literature, concluding that though it touted using the "scientific approach," the FMS Foundation was bereft of any clinical research or "tradition of clinical description" capable of empirically validating or supporting the contention that any such "clinical condition" as false memory syndrome actually existed. FMS's written materials withered under Dr. Lowenstein's review. Characterizing them as "selective, biased, and incomplete, FMS's "anecdotes describing unscrupulous behavior by therapists," according to Dr. Lowenstein, were "emotional and impassioned," lacking the "balanced data required" of a substantive "intellectually rigorous, impartial and scientific" study. More likely, Lowenstein stated, was that an "agenda of at least some members of this foundation seems to be that of creating a standard legal defense for well-to-do individuals who may be sued by their children alleging childhood sexual abuse." This information dovetailed with questions about FMS Foundation's CEO and secretary/treasurer Pamela Freyd. According to an account Freyd had published under a pseudonym, Freyd's daughter, Jennifer, a prominent researcher at the University of Oregon's Department of Psychology, had developed "false memories" of sexual abuse and child molestation as the result of her therapy. Silencing the Lambs Survivor-activists, alarmed by the FMS backlash, wondered why the government had been doing so little. Not to worry. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Science Unit, the same outfit featured in the 1991 box-office hit Silence of the Lambs, entered the debate in January 1992. Supervisory Special Agent Kenneth V Lanning's pamphlet for the FBI, Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse, aptly printed with a red and black cover, would set the record straight. "For at least eight years," the pamphlet stated, "American law enforcement has been aggressively investigating the allegations of victims of ritual abuse." Lanning's forty- three -page pamphlet was extremely well-grounded in strategies of investigation. Section IV, defining "ritual" and "what makes a crime satanic, ritualistic or occult" is lucid and well thought out, and bears careful examination by any serious student of this subject. Lanning's observations on social views of ritual are cogent. Anyone reading the material cannot fail to be impressed by Lanning's careful professionalism. He details excellent tactics for officers investigating suspected crimes of this nature. His cautions about oversimplification of a complex phenomena and hysterical reaction are correct. Few would argue when he cautions: "Professionals in this field must accept the fact that there is still much we do not know about the sexual victimization of children and that this area desperately needs study and research by rational, objective social scientists." This conclusion, however, seemed reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover's insistence throughout his entire professional life that the Mafia did not exist. Speculation among politically savvy survivor- activists centered around the possibility that a suddenly concerned federal government was using the FBI as a proxy. This would give the appearance of federal interest, but avoid the image-damage of a Congressional investigation that would serve neither Democrats nor Republicans in an election year. Losing a Ray of Hope MPD pioneer Steven Ray died in February 1992. Ray left a legacy of brilliant clinical research, which he modestly attributed to the help he received from his patients. Those patients and colleagues crowded into the Mission Viejo chapel where memorial services were held on a rainy afternoon. Dr. Pamela Reagor and a trauma-structured dissociative patient Ray had treated with some success gave eulogies. Steven Ray, the little guy with the Ben Turpin mustache and the twinkling eyes who had discovered the DNA-like action of structured multiple personalities, was gone, but his work continued. One survivor remarked through her tears: "He was a ray of hope." Malingering Doubt Three months later, in May 1992, FBI Agent Lanning was invited to speak at the California Child-Abuse Council in Orange, where he reiterated the conclusion of his pamphlet. "There is little or no evidence for the portion of [survivors'] allegations that deals with large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice, and organized satanic conspiracies." His audience of private-practice therapists and professionals within the criminal justice and child-welfare systems listened carefully, but it appeared-from the behind-the-hand whispering and the arms-folded-on-chest body language of the other guest speakers-that Lanning's conclusion was encountering resistance. Speculation about the extent to which cults networked was an occasional topic of conversation for professionals treating MPD, true. But this room wasn't a cult-seminar stop on the perpetually bedeviled fundamentalist -Christian lecture circuit, where satanic influence was seen to cause every societal ill. These psychotherapists and child-welfare workers were responsible for responding to a growing number of ritual abuse claims. They visited homes, observed living conditions, wrote reports, and put abused children in foster care. Extensive administrative time and costly therapy were often required. Patients and social welfare system clients, most of whom were not covered by medical insurance, created a substantive drain on budget-tight assistance programs. These professionals were concerned because they sensed something was going on, but they couldn't understand it. Minimizing abuse or explaining it away didn't solve their patients' problems or reduce their case loads. None of Lanning's final exptanations�that the origin of the phenomenon might lie in malingering, or factitious disorder (false reports to gain medical/psychological attention and sympathy), or munchausen syndrome, (false reports about personal victimization), or munchausen syndrome by proxy, (false reports of victimization of claimants' children) --could wholly account for all the cases they were seeing and processing. Several attendees perceived implicit sexual bias in Lanning's thesis. "Anytime it's a woman claiming this stuff goes on," said a female therapist, "you hear 'hysterical' in the next breath'' "I'll bet," said her male table-mate, "if males were making these charges they'd be taken more seriously." Lanning's rejection of "organized satanic conspiracies," didn't seem to take into account the legal fact that as few as two persons planning and acting together secretly to break the law comprise a conspiracy. Size has nothing to do with a potential conspiracy's impact. And conspiracy is difficult to prove. Lanning, however, was factually correct about court-admissible smoking-gun evidence. Not that a great many clues hadn't been found, but prosecutors generally chose to focus on the criminal aspect of a case. Due to the sensitive nature of First Amendment rights, religious issues were often ruled out under evidentiary laws during the discovery phase of a trial. Lanning had correctly pointed out, "Most people would agree that just because a victim tells you one detail that turns out to be true, this does not mean that every detail is true. But many people seem to believe that if you can disprove one part of a victim's story then the entire story is false. One of my main concerns in these cases is that people are getting away with sexually abusing children or committing other crimes because we cannot prove that they are members of organized cults that murder and eat people." Mixing religious motivation with cannibalism and criminal intent gave defense attorneys more to work with. Given their choices, prosecutors chose to omit mention of "ritual" in the same context as "abuse." Evidence, though, continued to surface. Not just that of disturbed youths, the "dabblers," "self-styled Satanists" with a penchant for displays of antisocial behavior and the heavymetal trappings of the commercial occult. Nor did such evidence include Anton LaVey and his tax-exempt Church of Satan. This new evidence, pointing to mind control and sophisticated programming, was of an entirely different kind. "Worthy of Study" Soon thereafter, George Greaves, Ph.D., a psychologist and adjunct professor of psychology at Georgia State University, and past president of the ISSMP&D, responded to concerns about evidence. In a chapter published in the book Out of Darkness by David Sakheim and Susan Devine, Greaves says, "Another point that those who insist on forensic levels of proof for [satanic cult survivors'] reports do not seem to realize is that clinical psychiatry is rarely aided directly in applying a generic body of facts to a particular case." Greaves mentions Walter Young's summary of the ritual abuse issue, which also appears in Out of Darkness: "If absolutely everything these patients tell us is false, we have stumbled onto a clinical phenomenon most worthy of study and we are honored to study it; if anything these patients tell us is true, we have stumbled onto a phenomenon most horrible and are obliged to study it." Still, questions remain unanswered: Does abuse and criminal activity perpetrated in the name or service of some spiritual entity(s) or using some form of spiritual background for unknown purposes exist? Is it possible that it's as widespread as some claim? Are there other, perhaps stronger, financial and political motives involved? In science, absence of evidence is not considered evidence of absence. Clinicians, Culture, and MPD Substantial clinical evidence from Europe, North and South America, Britain, and Australia supported claims that a pattern of mind control, hypersexual arousal, and pain-induced conditioning-as well as multiple-motive sexual abuse of children and young adults-was surfacing.[2] Masked in a context of religious beliefs, this conditioning could be linked, in some cases, to multiple personality disorder.[3] Conversely, Japanese psychiatrist Yamamoto Takahashi, had stated in a June 1990 article in Dissociation that no cases were showing up in Japan. Dr. Takahashi believed this might be due to cultural reasons. Child abuse was reportedly low in Japan, and cultural and social patterns deemphasize the concept of "self." Criminal enterprises are relegated to a traditional "criminal" class. International interest had been aroused, and in reply to Dr. Takahashi, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, including Dr. Colin Ross from Canada, Drs. B.A. Van der Kolk and Ono Van Der Hart from the Netherlands, Alfonso Martinez-Toboas of Puerto Rico, and Drs. Bennett Braun and Edward Frischholz from the United States, questioned his use of an outdated DSM-III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association), his "confirmation bias" sampling methods, his scientific methods, his statistical analysis, his possible "cultural bias," and his lack of "clinical sophistication." Taking it in graceful stride, Dr. Takahashi responded that he felt privileged to have such response to his preliminary work and that "it goes without saying that further study should be conducted." C12H12N1O3PS On December 13, 1992, an astounding controversy hit the pages of the Los Angeles Times. A low-level volunteer committee member of the Los Angeles County Commission of Women's Ritual Abuse Task Force, without authorization, called an L.A. Times reporter. Identifying herself to the Times as a "survivor of ritual abuse," the woman claimed excitedly that Dr. Catherine Gould, a children's psychologist of national stature, had thought that someone tried to poison her (Dr. Gould) with a well-known commercial insecticide. Dr. Gould's report had been made in confidence, and she had specifically instructed that it not be made public. The article, either from editing or because of a "paucity of data," as Gould later claimed, failed to mention any of the curious and significant facts surrounding the incident. Several of Gould's colleagues became concerned when they began experiencing symptoms that resembled Gould's. These colleagues were also active on the Los Angeles Task Force. Shadows of Fear Fatality soon added itself to mystery. Found dead, hanging from the rafters in his garage in March 1993 at his Laguna Beach residence, was psychiatrist Daniel Schiele, who also treated MPD patients. Schiele, a popular and effective professional, was considered an articulate, outspoken theorist on trauma-structured dissociation. His work, in clinical circles, was gaining increasing importance. Schiele had amassed hundreds of examples of often gruesome artwork from children and adults who claimed to be survivors of ritual abuse. Police listed the probable cause of death as suicide. Dr. Schiele, who had been instrumental in educating hospital and psychiatric unit personnel about MPD, according to the preliminary police report, had been "depressed." None of Schiele's colleagues knew why, nor could they offer any explanations. He had been hospitalized previously from an overdose of prescription drugs. Again, no explanation could be found. Schiele had disclosed in a seminar some months before that his father had committed suicide-in the same way. Adding a sinister twist to the tragedy, some months prior to Dr. Schiele's death, a rumor had circulated that "the cult" was planning to kill an important-if not top-level�clinician. Inquiries tracing the rumor's source were inconclusive. Shocking Evidence Dale McCulley, a documentary-maker who produced clinical training videos, obtained a professionally assembled electrical device from an MPD patient who claimed the device had been used in ritual abuse. McCulley contacted a journalist colleague, who in turn put him in touch with Alfonso Valdez, an investigator with the Orange County District Attorney's office. Valdez immediately made arrangements to have the device scientifically analyzed. Using a tape McCully provided, Orange County lawenforcement technicians were able to make a preliminary assessment, backed up by a University of California Irvine analysis. The device was functional. Within days, the journalist had traced an important component part of the device to a small electronics firm in Tujunga, California. The company occasionally subcontracted for the United States government. Valdez, McCully, and the journalist visited the factory, identified the part from schematic drawings in the company's archives, and with the help of the company's staff and manage-ment, bench-tested the device. They concluded that the device could produce the conditioning etectro-shock that MPD patients who claimed ritual abuse were describing. An informant told Valdez that he had seen "a similar gizmo" used in sadomasochistic torture. Something, it seemed, really was going on. pps. 11-30 --[notes]-- Chapter 2 1. Frank Putnam et al. Diagnosis and Treatment of MPD (New York: Guilford Press, 1986). 2. M. Bray, Poppies on the Rubbish Heap: Sexual Abuse-The Child's Voice. (London: Cannongate, 1991). 3. S. Henry and N. Halpern, "Our Approach," Proceedings of the Sixth Western Regional Conference on Multiple Personality and Dissociation, 1993. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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